One of the series' most important female protagonists, Egwene begins as a village girl from Emond's Field who discovers she can channel the One Power and ends as the Amyrlin Seat - effectively the leader of all Aes Sedai. Her rise from novice to the most powerful position in the White Tower is one of the series' central narrative achievements, driven entirely by her intelligence, political acumen, and force of will rather than raw power. Egwene's arc is a sustained study in the nature of authority and legitimacy - how it is earned, how it is maintained, and what it costs. She is also a Dreamer, able to prophesy through her dreams and enter Tel'aran'rhiod, the World of Dreams, with unusual skill.

One of the three central male protagonists, Mat begins the series as a mischievous, dice-rolling farmer from Emond's Field and ends it as one of the greatest military commanders in the history of the world - a fact he resents deeply and tries to avoid at every turn. Mat is a ta'veren, one of three people around whom the Pattern of the Wheel weaves especially tightly, and he is infused with the memories and skills of thousands of soldiers and generals from past ages, giving him an instinctive tactical genius he neither asked for nor wanted. He carries a spear called Ashandarei and wears a medallion that blocks the One Power. His relationship with Tuon, the Seanchan Daughter of the Nine Moons, is one of the series' most entertaining and complex dynamics. Mat provides most of the series' comic relief without ever being less than fully capable when it matters.

The Wisdom of Emond's Field - the village healer and advisor - and one of the most powerful channellers in the series. Nynaeve's defining characteristic for most of the series is her block: she can only channel when angry, a limitation that both limits and defines her for many books. When she finally breaks through it she becomes one of the strongest channellers alive. She is fiercely protective of the people she considers her responsibility, particularly the other Emond's Field characters, and her arc involves learning that protection sometimes means letting people face their own dangers. She eventually marries Lan Mandragoran, a match that says something about both of them. Her skill at Healing, the most demanding of the One Power's applications, is unmatched.

The third of the central male protagonists, Perrin is a blacksmith's apprentice from Emond's Field who discovers he is a Wolfbrother - able to communicate with wolves and access their senses, sharing a primal connection to the ancient bond between wolves and humans. He has enormous physical strength, enhanced further by his wolf nature, and golden eyes that mark him as something other than ordinary. Perrin is the most grounded and emotionally steady of the three boys - serious, methodical, and deeply uncomfortable with the violence his abilities push him toward. His arc across the series involves both his external struggle to protect the Two Rivers and his internal struggle to accept what he is, culminating in his mastery of the World of Dreams in the final books.

The central protagonist of the Wheel of Time and the prophesied Dragon Reborn - the promised champion of the Light foretold to face the Dark One at the Last Battle, and the reincarnation of Lews Therin Telamon, the channeller whose sealing of the Dark One's prison three thousand years ago tainted the male half of the One Power and doomed every male channeller of his age to madness. Rand begins the series as a sheepherder from Emond's Field with no knowledge of his heritage, and the fourteen books follow his transformation as prophecy, power, and the weight of being necessary reshape him. He can channel saidin, the male half of the One Power, making him simultaneously the world's greatest hope and its greatest danger.

Moiraine's Warder and the uncrowned king of Malkier, a nation destroyed by the Blight before he was old enough to remember it. Lan is the archetypal fantasy warrior elevated well above the archetype - technically supreme, emotionally closed, and carrying a grief and sense of duty so deep they have become structural to his identity. He has been fighting the Shadow his entire life because there is nothing else for him to do, bound by his oath to Moiraine and by his own conviction that a Malkieri king's only remaining purpose is to die walking north into the Blight.

The Dragon, leader of the forces of Light in the Age of Legends. His voice haunts Rand's mind.

An Ogier from Stedding Shangtai, Loial is eight feet tall, gentle, bookish, and deeply reluctant to be involved in anything that might end up in a story - Ogier live for centuries and consider haste to be a sign of poor judgment. He joins the group as a guide through the Ways, the Ogier-built network of passage between stedding, and stays because he is curious and because the friends he makes matter to him more than his discomfort. Loial is a scholar writing a book about the Dragon Reborn, which he considers a considerable conflict of interest given that he is watching events unfold from the inside. He is one of the few characters who is both genuinely powerful (Ogier are enormously strong) and entirely peaceable by nature, which makes the moments when he fights all the more striking.

An Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah who has spent twenty years searching for the Dragon Reborn, Moiraine is the catalyst who sets the entire story in motion by arriving in Emond's Field at the start of The Eye of the World. She is among the most capable and subtle political operators in the series - small, controlled, and apparently serene in a way that conceals both her considerable power and the personal cost of two decades of single-minded purpose. Her relationship with Rand is the series' central mentor dynamic, though it is never simple - she manipulates as much as she guides, and her view of the Dragon Reborn is shaped by two decades of treating the role as more important than the person.

A gleeman - a travelling entertainer of stories, songs, and juggling - who accompanies the group from Emond's Field and becomes one of their most reliable allies. Thom's apparent profession conceals a past as a court bard and political operative of considerable sophistication; he has navigated the highest levels of Andoran and Cairhienin politics and understands power in ways the Two Rivers characters take years to learn. He is older than the others, scarred, and carries a personal grief - his nephew Owyn was a male channeller who was gentled and died, and Thom blames himself and the Aes Sedai equally.